Recent Dissertations in Disability History

The DHA would like to congratulate the authors of these recent dissertations in disability history (2007-present). List compiled by Penny L. Richards.

  • Alleman, Michael J. (PhD, University of Texas at Dallas 2007):  "A Pound of Flesh:  Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth's"
  • Ball, Carolyn (PhD, Capella University 2007):  "The History of American Sign Language Interpreting Education"
  • Barow, Thomas (Humboldt Universität Berlin, 2007):  "Die 'Schwachsinningenfürsorge' in Schweden 1916-1945 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung pädagogischer Entwicklungen" [The care of for 'feebleminded' people in Sweden 1916-1945 with special attention for educational developments]
  • Barsch, Sebastian (University of Cologne 2007):  "Geistig behinderte Menschen in der SBZ/DDR. Erziehung, Bildung, Betreuung. 1945-1989/90"  [People with intellectual disabilities in the Soviet Sector/GDR. Education and care. 1945-1989/90]
  • Blackie, Daniel (PhD, University of Helsinki [Finland] 2010): "Disabled Revolutionary War Veterans and the Construction of Disability in the Early United States, c1776-1840." Available online at
    http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-10-6343-5
  • Boster, Dea Hadley (PhD, University of Michigan 2010):  "Unfit for Bondage: Disability and African American Slavery in the United States, 1800-1860"
  • Clark, Jennifer Elizabeth (PhD, Harvard University 2010):  "Making ALS Matter:  Disease Activism and Disease Identity in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, 1850-2000"
  • Elman, Julie Passanante (PhD, George Washington University 2009):  "Medicalizing Edutainment:  Enforcing Disability in the Teen Body, 1970-2000"
  • Fiorello, Michael D. (PhD, Trinity International University 2008):  "The Physically Disabled in Ancient Israel According to the Old Testament and Ancient Near East Sources"
  • Fleming, Touba Ghadessi  (PhD, Northwestern University 2007):  "Identity and Physical Deformity in Italian Court Portraits, 1550-1650: Dwarves, Hirsutes, and Castrati"
  • Franklin, Paige Elizabeth (PhD, George Washington University 2010):  "Perforating Tympanic Walls:  A Second Look at Identity Politics in Relation to the 1988 and 2006 Protests at Gallaudet University"
  • Fratz, Deborah Mae (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2008):  "Disabled Subjects:  Disability, Gender, and Ethical Agency in Victorian Realism"
  • Garrison, Heather (PhD, Fordham University, 2008): "Adolescents' Perceptions of the Sociocultural Construct of Disability When Responding to Literature: Of Mice and Men"
  • Gibson, Mary Eckenrode (PhD, University of Pennsylvania 2007):  "From Charity to an Able Body:  The Care and Treatment of Orthopedically Disabled Children in Virginia 1910-1935"
  • Goler, Robert I. (PhD, George Mason University 2009):  "The Symbol of the Veteran Amputee in American Culture"
  • Gonder, Patrick (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2007):  "Like a Monstrous Jigsaw:  Genetics, Evolution, and the Body in the Horror Films of the 1950s"
  • Greene, Kyra R. (PhD, Stanford University 2007):   "The Role of Protest Waves, Cultural Frames, and Institutional Activism in the Evolution of American Disability Rights Policies"
  • Hamill, Ann T.  (PhD, University of Cincinnati 2008):  "Two Moral Universes:  The Social Problem of Idiots from 1845-1855 and Mentally Retarded Sons and Daughters from 1945 to 1955"
  • Hanganu-Bresch, Cristina (PhD, University of Minnesota 2008): "Faces of Depression:   A Study of Antidepressant Advertisements in the American and British Journals of Psychiatry, 1960-2004"
  • Harris, Sean J.  (PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago 2007):  "Found insane in 'the Holy Land': Psychiatry and the African American experience in Illinois, 1870--1910"
  • Jennings, Audra R.  (PhD, Ohio State University 2008):  "With Minds Fixed on the Horrors of War:  Liberalism and Disability Activism, 1940-1960"
  • Mintz, Fredric (PhD, University of California, Berkeley 2010):  "Hard Rock Miners' Phthisis in 19th and Early 20th Century Britain: From Diagnosis to Compensation"
  • Morrison, Amanda E. (PhD, State University of New York at Buffalo 2010):  "Cuerpos Latinoamericanos:  La Discapacidad Fundacional en la Novela Hispanoamericana 1847-1958"
  • Murray, Joseph John (PhD, University of Iowa 2007):  "A Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin:  The Transnational Lives of Deaf Americans, 1870-1924"
  • Nack Ngue, Julie (PhD, UCLA 2007):  "Critical Conditions: Refiguring Bodies of Illness and Disability in Francophone African and Caribbean Women's Writing"
  • O'Tool, Mark Polking (PhD, UC-Santa Barbara 2007):  "Caring for the Blind in Medieval Paris: Live at the Quinze-Vingts, 1250-1430"
  • Padilla, Jalynn Olsen (PhD, University of Delaware 2007):  "Army of 'Cripples':  Northern Civil War Amputees, Disability, and Manhood in Victorian America"
  • Park, Hyung Wook (PhD, University of Minnesota 2009):  "Refiguring Old Age:  Shaping Scientific Research on Senescence, 1900-1960"
  •  Pfau, Aleksandra (PhD, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 2008):  "Madness in the realm: Narratives of mental illness in late medieval France"
  • Quackenbush, Nicole (PhD, University of Arizona 2008):  "Bodies in Culture, Culture in Bodies:  Disability Narratives and a Rhetoric of Resistance"
  • Reeve, Patricia Anne (PhD, Boston College 2007):  "Cultural and Legal Representations of Imperiled Workers and their Political Significance, Massachusetts (1820-1910)"
  • Richardson, Kristina L. (PhD, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 2008):   "Blighted Bodies and Physical Difference in Cairo, Damascus and Mecca, 1400-1550"
  • Riley, Maryellen (EdD, Boston University 2007):  "The Education of Children with Disabilities in Germany from 1945-1970"
  • Rose, Sarah Frances (PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago 2008):  "No Right to be Idle:  The Invention of Disability, 1850-1930"
  • Salerno, Abigail Lauren (PhD, Duke University 2007):  "The Blind Heroine in Cinema History:  Film and the Not-Visual"
  • Sanchez, Rebecca (PhD, State University of New York at Buffalo 2010):  "Embodied Language:  Deaf Theory, Visual Poetics, and American Modernism"
  • Simonis, Fabien (PhD, Princeton University 2010):  "Mad Acts, Mad Speech, and Mad People in Late Imperial Chinese Law and Medicine"
  • Trent, Mary Shelley (PhD, UC-Irvine 2010):  "Enigmatic Bachelors:  Masculinity, Girlhood, and Vision in the Art of Joseph Cornell and Henry Darger"
  • Verstraete, Pieter (Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KULeuven, Belgium, 2008):  "Disability History:  A Foucauldian Perspective"

If you have any suggestions or additions for our disability history pages, please contact Phil Ferguson.